Entries about Thunersee

  • May is a funny month for me. The countryside is green and lush, with lots of flowers in the meadows and a pleasant mix of cooling rain and warming sunshine, but I often feel a little frustration because the higher mountains are often still covered with slushy snow. This year, I’ve been spending a lot […]

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  • As the previous post for April went down well, I thought I’d work backwards and start adding a few new little galleries of photos to show what I’ve been up to each month. Here’s March 2022 in pictures.

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  • It’s easy for me to forget that I don’t need to “go somewhere” to enjoy a walk. I sit here and wonder where to go: which cable-car, which lakeside walk, which spectacular valley. This comes of having the great fortune to live within half-an-hour of some pretty wonderful places. But this commonly leads me to […]

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  • Cannibals in autumn

    In which I tell a short tale about cannibals.

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  • A lunchtime walk by the vineyards in the sunshine, ten years after moving away from nearby.

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  • Swallows on a telephone wire

    Last of the swallows

    Last of the swallows for this year, I suspect. I haven’t seen them around much this year at home, but there were dozens out yesterday, feeding their young before their long journey. (We have a perfectly-positioned telephone wire near our balcony, so it’s a great spot to watch and to photograph them.)

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  • Dampfschiff Spiez passing Faulensee

    The steamship “Spiez” – known colloquially and diminutively as “Das Spiezerli” thanks to its small size – en route from Thun to Interlaken for the first time after nearly five years of restoration work.

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  • The Branch at Weissenau

    If you find a natural feature, enjoy it while it lasts.

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  • Aeschiried, Switzerland

    Photos from a wander in the winter sunshine in 2019.

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  • The first part of my personal retrospective of a year which – to my eternal relief – wasn’t as bad on a personal level as it could easily have been.

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  • The memory moon

    When the full (-ish) moon rises above Interlaken at this time of year, it always reminds me of a photo my Dad took in south Wales many years ago, where the reflection wasn’t on a lake but on the smooth surface of the sea off the coast of Freshwater East.

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  • I bought a bike because it’s fun, it will improve my fitness rapidly – thereby helping me to get ready for hiking season – and because it means that I don’t have to rely on public transport or on my car for my daily trip to work and back. It also allows me to enjoy the local scenery more; getting me further more quickly than on foot.

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  • After many years, I’m back in the saddle with my own e-bike. And I’m loving it.

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  • Wallrain park in Spiez

    I’m an introvert at the best of times, which comes in handy when needing to keep away from other people.

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  • Screenshot of Kipfer holiday apartment, Faulensee, Switzerland

    Using a website visitor’s browser settings to seamlessly display content in a language they can understand.

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  • A new perspective – Faulensee

    Short sequence of aerial views of Faulensee in Switzerland.

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  • Spiez castle, photographed at dusk using a Mavic Air drone

    A quick tip on how to get better image results from your Mavic drone in low-light conditions.

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  • After so many years in Switzerland, we rely on the quarter-hourly chiming of the nearest church bell to know what the time is. Or, if we’re enjoying a summer evening, quickly looking across to the other side of the village. 

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  • Using a drone isn’t all about “aerial photography”, but, for me, about the ability to get better angles for photos which are otherwise out of reach.

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  • After a lot of deliberation, a few months’ saving, and a lot of review videos and articles, I decided to buy a drone.

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  • Catching the ship from Faulensee to Sundlauenen, hiking through the forest past St. Beatus Caves to Merligen, and then home by paddle steamer.

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  • A fresh eye

    This year’s aim: see new places and try new things. Close to home, this means going out from home and documenting the village where I live as much as possible. Despite living here for nearly five years, the only parts of Faulensee I’ve really photographed have been the views from above the village or from home.

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  • I was half an hour early for an appointment at the Spiez council offices this morning, so I went for a brief stroll through the woods to the top of the vineyards while I was waiting. It was so peaceful, with fresh powdered snow slipping silently from the trees and only two or three other people there […]

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  • Views from home across the lake to the Niederhorn on a winter Sunday.

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  • Faulensee, Switzerland

    Below the water line

    Low water levels in Lake Thun in winter reveal large expanses of foreshore.

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  • The wider angle

    First shots with two new acquisitions: a super-wide lens and an RR90 shutter release cable.

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  • Jo found that because we’d saved so many points on our supermarket card, that we could “afford” a kayak using points alone. A few days later, and a large and heavy cardboard box arrived on the post woman’s scooter trailer and we had our dinghy: an Intex Challenger K2.

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  • The hill above Aeschiried has been calling to me ever since we moved to Faulensee. It’s immediately obvious, when looking up the hill, that the views across the lake must be great. There are a few houses dotted across the hillside, and the sharp-eyed will notice a small ski lift leading up into the trees. […]

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  • Our regular swallow visitors have a preferred perch above the area around our house. And it’s just a few metres from our balcony.

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  • In which we start the hiking season as early as we possibly can, with the longest route we’ve done to date.

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  • Where my love for the square image format comes from, and how it is achieved in the Fujifilm X-T1 digital camera.

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  • Schlächtenwald

    There are plenty of little, almost unnoticeable roads around here, which lead up valleys and through forests to remote farm buildings and dead-ends. I like to pore over the Kümmerly + Frey maps – the Swiss equivalent of the British Ordnance Survey – to see whether there are any worth driving up.

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  • What the Swiss keep in their barns and cellars

    A short film by Rick Steves about the unexpected artillery behind closed barn doors, and the overly-secure cellar bomb shelters beneath almost every Swiss home. The main installation featured is the Artilleriewerk Faulensee at the end of our road.

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  • Filming from the air

    Sitting at my computer this afternoon, I spot, out of the window, a yellow plane droning lazily around above the village. Not a full-sized plane but a metre-long radio-controlled model, with a GoPro camera attached, filming today’s glorious winter day on the lake. I couldn’t resist taking a few photos for the pilot and chatting […]

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  • Photos at Getty Images

    I’m proud that international picture agency Getty Images invited me to submit photos for their Flickr Collection a couple of years ago. Since then, I get the occasional request to add more and my small set now numbers 52 photos, with a dozen or so more currently awaiting approval. Although the percentage that I get […]

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  • Interlaken Golf Course

    I took a walk up through the woods from Heimwehfluh, near Interlaken. The top of the walk, after half an hour or so of wheezing and muscle aching, was high above the end of Lake Thun. Aside from enjoying the walk, having some exercise, and enjoying the view, I also discovered that the golf course […]

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  • And so it begins

    Just as summer arrived in the Bernese Oberland late this year, so the first snow fall has arrived early. But that’s OK: the sun is shining and it looks beautiful.

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  • One of my landscape photos is chosen for a 2014 calendar, complied from submissions from the Swiss Twitter community.

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  • Twalender 2014

    Here in Switzerland, a few active photographic members of social media website Twitter have decided to pool their resources and initiate a calendar of Swiss photos for 2014, featuring photos from a Flickr group entitled “Twalender 2014”. (Kalender being the German translation of calendar.) Flickr members can add up to five of their photos to the […]

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